Dukes of Hazzard re-runs cancelled

[A.J.]

re: confederate flag controversy

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/7/1/dukes-of-hazzard-cancelled.html

I remember this show when I was a kid back in the 80s(they were the best of times, they were the worst of times).
At such a tender age and not being an American I hadn't a Scooby as to the significance of the flag, the "stars & bars", on the [dylann]roof of the car(or for that matter who the car, "General Lee" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xW0s6XFJyw), was nicknamed after). All I recall is that is that I thought the the aforementioned flag looked bonnie(like Catherine Bach:wub:;) )


Youthful innocence lost?:unsure:

[PhoenixAsh]

That is kind of like censoring books like Tom Sawyer.

But unlike that situation (where I oppose the censoring because it is an age piece) I do not have a strong opinion on it. I watched the show as a kid here in the Netherlands...I think I kind of liked it for its daredevil anti authority look and feel....but I can't remember most of it except for the car jumps and the hihaw-ing and that extremely short jeans were sometimes named daisies.

The status of the Battle flag here, where it is sometimes used, is more of a symbol against authority and of rebellious nature although has mainly been used in counter culture of rock and bikers as far as I am aware.
And it didn't have the same cultural and historical meaning.

In the US though....the representation, connotation and the culture in which it is used I real however and does seem to tap into some of that culture and glorifies it to some extent that cancelling the show at this point is perhaps a wise idea....given the context

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

Okay, that's a little silly.

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I watched maybe one or two episodes of the show, and I didn't really enjoy it. Politics-wise, it seemed to exist in this bizarre whitewashed (no pun intended) version of the South where the battle flag is just a symbol of local pride (not the Stars and Bars, that was the "we swear we're not a Latin American country" first version of the CSA national flag), there is no racism at all, the good ol' boys were harmless rustic oafs as opposed to violent bigots etc. But then, the American South is generally portrayed like that - outside some very specific genres - on television. Ultimately, it makes no sense to either take a position for the cancelling or against it. Removing the Stars and Bars won't really make a difference for black people in America, particularly not as long as there are the Stars and Stripes for the racists to hide behind.

[Rafiq]

One should welcome such a development, it demonstrates that the ethical standards in the Untied States have improved. It is not as though they were ordered to do this, they did it because now the innocence of this flag has been tarnished in the eyes of the public, it is not longer a neutral symbol of the southern identity, it - much like the southern identity itself - now carries POLITICAL significance in pertinence to the southern reaction.

[mushroompizza]

Thank god! That show was shitty boring and racist, I saw the movie remake and I have no idea how it wasnt boycotted. I think every black guy had his hat turned backwards and looked like Ice Cube.

[PhoenixAsh]

That however is not unique to this series nor to that movie...

The series is rather different from the movie and the two should not be compared. There are hardly any black people in the series and when there are black people they are usually culturally white. That is a whole other type of racism...The series simply ignored black people for the most part and excluded them and that is hardly unique in compared to other contemporary time pieces. Shows that did feature black people usually cast them in the stereotypical roles or as villains.

The stereotype and trope is still being used excessively today although there seems to be more nuance...as well as more variation.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

To some degree, this is a moral panic over a flag. A flag which certainly should be taken down in every official capacity (by any means necessary, if reactionaries disagree), but when it gets to burying a decades old piece of pop culture because the flag is on the main characters' car? The show itself was no more racist than any other whitewashed Hollywood show of the time. It just seems silly.

[LeftOrthodox]

Its the popular thing to do. That is all. I think taking the flag down from government grounds and having no official governement endorsement of any kind of the flag is probably where things should end. What people do in the private sector is up to them. So oh well if they want to take it down then so be it. I'm just tired of the heehaws on facebook talking about their 1st amendment rights being taken away......:laugh::laugh:

[lutraphile]

This is honestly kind of stupid. Whitewashing old pop media accomplishes nothing.

[mushroompizza]

Whitewashing? The show was already about two white rednecks whats to whitewash?